AuthorTopic: Fave Books / Currently Reading (Read 728258 times)

I was bored to tears with Foucault's Pendulum, lost my copy, and never got another. I guess Umberto Eco is OK, but he sometimes strikes me as a middlebrow version of postmodernism -- I'd rather just read Pynchon, DeLillo, or DFW. I'm confused most of the time, but I'd rather be confused than bored.

And also:

Connection to last week's show: I've been spending a lot of time in airports lately, and browse in the crappy bookstores looking at all the business books. I'm too broke and already own too many unread books to buy any, but for some inexplicable reason I have this involuntary response to collections of identical books, like the 33 1/3 books or the BFI Film Classics series. I just want them all. So I flip through the Harvard Business School Pocket Mentor series, and part of me (mostly superstitiously) thinks, if I learn all this MBA crap, I can reboot my life and have a career in TV. So I get them from the library, and they're just about the dullest thing I've ever read, like reading a memo. They take about as long to read as memos, too.

How does one read Dallas-Forth Worth?!?! Help, I've never heard the show before and... forget it.

Logged

I really don't appreciate your sarcastic, anti-comedy tone, Bro!

Pidgeon

I'm too broke and already own too many unread books to buy any, but for some inexplicable reason I have this involuntary response to collections of identical books, like the 33 1/3 books or the BFI Film Classics series. I just want them all.

I'm like that with the O'Reilly Media computer books with the different animules on the covers.

I finished Ubik, which was much better in the first 60 pages than in the last 120. There's a character named Pat Conway (or maybe Conley), who has the ability to essentially move her consciousness back in time maybe 15 minutes, see multiple possible immediate futures and get a glimpse of their long-term consequences, choose the one that she thinks best avoids the problem in what actually already happened, then drag everyone along that path. In 60's parlance, the scenes that include her are mind-blowing, and I assumed were opening up exciting options for the rest of the book. And then, basically, she's not used for the rest of the book. Very disappointing, and the main conceit of the rest of the book just doesn't live up, even remotely, to the set-up. Damn it.

I finished War and Peace!!!!! My 70000 word summary is coming soon. I am reading Infinite Jest for the third time. Now that I am a more careful reader, I hope more of it sticks with me. I love the second chapter, the guy waiting for a weed delivery.

I finished War and Peace!!!!! My 70000 word summary is coming soon. I am reading Infinite Jest for the third time. Now that I am a more careful reader, I hope more of it sticks with me. I love the second chapter, the guy waiting for a weed delivery.

I love it, Dave ... you're like me (and like a buncha youse, I suspect). I don't know why, because I no longer have the intestinal fortitude never mind the time to read the monster books. But I still want the monster books. I'm in the middle of a HUGE book purge since I have more shit than a person can read in 10 lifetimes, and I am still holding on to these 1000 page books. Even if I read them 15 years ago or whatever. Even if I know deep in my heart I will never read them.

I finished War and Peace!!!!! My 70000 word summary is coming soon. I am reading Infinite Jest for the third time. Now that I am a more careful reader, I hope more of it sticks with me. I love the second chapter, the guy waiting for a weed delivery.

I've done two readings of IJ (after two readings, I figure it's ok to just go by the initials, right?) myself. It's one of my favorites. And that second chapter is pretty damn good. Also, Wheelchair Assassins.

It ain't Infinite Jest, but it's pretty massive as far as music books go (plus many footnotes!).

Highly recommended.

I may have to check that one out. I've also been wanting to read "As Serious As Your Life" for a long time, but always forget. I had a CD by the Art Ensemble of Chicago, way back in the day, and then I let someone "borrow" it, back when I was dumb enough to do that. It was more likely that I was trying to evangelize to an uninterested party, and for my efforts that thing got lost to the ages.

Reading Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, which is based on accounts of people who have fled. Like most people, I've been well aware of the country's extreme totalitarianism and famine, but this really adds another dimension to the history. Fascinating and frightening.